Games We Play
by LucyRasmussen2
Summary: Sarah's time in Haven (repost)
1. Doctors and Nurses

Title: Games We Play

Author: LucyRasmussen

Summary: An AU take on the events of "Sarah". Might be multi chapter to outline Sarah's time in Haven.

Rating: T, for sure, sexy things mentioned.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Notes: For ThatIsSoHaven, for being the best fangirl she can be. And because one of her Tumblr posts inspired this fic.

This is a repost due to hijinks with my earlier account.

Doctors and Nurses

In another reality he still meets Sarah.

Stuart has a freak out in the middle of the Haven Mini Mart, and he happens to be in the same aisle.

He wakes up in the parking lot of the Veteran's Hospital. To avoid awkward questions, he pretends to be a new doctor who has been on a double shift. The security guard leers at him but seems to believe the lie. He steals a white coat off a random hanger and walks down the tiled hallway in search of a more convenient alibi.

He ducks into a random room when a group of nurses enter the hallway and he recognises her voice immediately. They're discussing something about the war and Kennedy and apparently finding it a hilarious subject.

The redhead on the left doesn't seem very interested in the conversation. She excuses herself to go check on a patient. The patient whose room he broke into.

She stops short when she sees the white coat, and eyes him curiously.

Not at all fazed, he asks her to check the temperature and blood pressure because the patient doesn't look very well. She does, much to her own (and the patients) surprise. While she does, she's next to him and he can feel a familiar warmth against his hand.

Then she pounces.

She grabs his ear while giving him a lecture on how Mr. Matheson had been checked for a fever 15 minutes before and how horrible a doctor he is for not reading the chart. They're standing on the steps outside by the time she's finished ranting.

He still tells her how amazing he thinks she is.

Oddly, this doesn't convince her.

Their conversation is stopped short by an ambulance arriving and people who, in the bustle of nurses and shouting don't stop to think about his medical abilities.

The patient, an obviously pregnant woman is laying on a stretcher making odd choking sounds. Her husband keeps talking about something she ate and how she collapsed right after. While not a doctor, he recognises anaphalaxia when he sees it. He grabs one of the pens in the breast pocket of the stolen doctor's coat and screws it apart to construct a make shift breathing tube. He tells Sarah to make an incision for it, and watches her closely as she does. He jams the pen into the incision and the choking sounds stop. The woman relaxes and her eyes become less stricken with fear.

The husband thanks him profusely, and she's watching him. She smiles.

Later, when he and Duke have found a place to stay for the night he makes up an elaborate lie about going to find Vince and Dave to ask for help.

Instead he returns to the hospital in the hopes of catching her again.

She's with her friends and he can't help but realise how uninterested she seems to be in them.

The chattering comes to an abrupt halt when they notice him, when she notices him.

So he steals her away from them.

To a beautiful beach, still warm from the sun.

It isn't until they sit down to eat that she finally speaks.

She admires his bravery, she says. What he did for the pregnant woman earlier.

How she can't resist touching him.

Her hands travel up his arm, down his arm. Her fingers are on his cheek and in his hair.

They are interrupted by a car stopping nearby, so she takes him elsewhere.

Her room at the local motel is small, but neat and equipped with a double bed.

He watches as she strips out of the nurses uniform and how she maintains eye contact the whole time. When she's down to her slipdress and not much more he pulls her into his lap.

They kiss, ferocious and wanting. He's tried not to fantasize about this, really he did.

But on the list of ways it could be, this one ranks pretty high.

She looks at him and tells him she's not feeling well. That she's flushed and fevered and needs a check up. And since she's already half naked, would he do the honours?

The first „check up" is short and intense. It leaves them breathless and still wanting more.

The second time is longer, and more intimate. He makes sure to discover everything there is to know about her body. The way it bends and folds. What it feels like when he kisses certain parts. They reverse roles for the third time. She's experienced, so much more then he bargained for. Her knowledge of the human anatomy comes in handy as she tells him what she's doing and how his body should be reacting.

Later, when they are spent and she's dozing in his arms he admits he's not a real doctor. She giggles against his chest, making a strange vibration ripple across it.

Of course she knows, she tells him. She's more disappointed that he didn't just tell her he was a cop. She's never had a cop before, only random one nighters with a soldier she'd nursed back to health in Korea. They'd spent three hot sticky nights in a crummy motel in Seoul before he was sent back to his unit. A week later, word came back that he'd stepped on a mine and was killed instantly. After that, she'd decided she was done with love. Until today.

He kisses the top of her head, knowing that he won't be able to stay here in this moment with her forever either. Duke is probably wondering where he is, God knows what is happening back in the 21st century.

They sleep, and he's awoken by the sound of a car starting outside at 5 am.

The sun is peeking through the curtains, and for the first time in a long time he's able to relax. Really completely feel himself relax. She cuddles closer but doesn't wake up.

The second time he wakes, she's standing in the doorway to the bathroom wearing a dark blue kimono. She strokes the smooth fabric, while telling him about her soldier haggling for it with a Korean cloth merchant. He watches her, fascinated, as she walks into the bathroom and drops the robe to the floor.

He follows her as if in a trance. She's standing in front of the tub, waiting for his next move.

He asks if she's done this with her soldier, daring him like this.

She laughs and steps in.

The water is warm, soothing.

Three more hours, she tells him. Before she has to go back to work.

So they bathe, and he enjoys the feel of her body moving against his. Oddly, he can feel the temperature of the water inbetween them, and the way it splashes against his skin.

In their last moments, he watches her dress and do her hair. The urge to undo all of it is strong, because she's acting slow and deliberate and he knows that look in her eyes.

He tells her about the Troubles, that she's special. That she's here to help.

He tells her to find Vince and Dave.

While she's checking her appearance in the floor length mirror, he wraps his arms around her while telling her that he can not stay. But that he'll always know her, regardless of how much time passes. She makes him promise.

He walks her back to the hospital, where Duke is impatiently waiting at the entrance. He's found Stuart, and all he really wants is for Sarah to fix him so he can get back to his life and his restaurant.

He kisses her goodbye, and it feels so ordinary he thinks he won't ever be able to resist doing the same with Audrey. He brushes her stomach with his fingers, and then the room starts to spin.

The last thing he sees is her eyes. Beautiful and daring and blue.

He can't wait to see them again. Maybe sometime soon.


	2. Nurses and Reporters

Nurses and Reporters

_James, that's what his name was._

_Came in on a Sunday morning caked in blood and mud and the will to live._

_Slept a lot at first. She spent a lot of those first few days washing him down. The mud really got everywhere._

She's making her rounds one morning when she spies them. They standing outside a hospital room, hissing at each other. One of them is lean and lank, while the other is shorter and pudgier.

She watches them for a while to see what they'd do.

They enter the hospital room and there's a strange hissing sound.

After they leave, she checks the patient and finds a fresh burn mark on the inside of his wrist. It's red and brown and distinctive. Circular lines, little figures. Arms around her.

The world spins and then there's only the dark.

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division._

_He woke up after a week, with her standing over him. _

It's strange being the patient.

She ponders as she looks up at the white tiled ceiling.

Then she feels it.

A tiny flutter just under her navel.

No, no, no.

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division, started to slowly come back to life under her auspices._

_She'd take him for walks around the camp._

_Sometimes he'd sit and stare and sometimes he'd chatter until his voice was hoarse._

_James Weller, lieutenant of whatever division, but Jim to her._

When she wakes up the second time, there's a visitor.

He comes into focus just enough for her to recognise the taller, lankier journalist.

He brought her grapes and flowers.

Tells her he's sorry, but that they did what was needed. That she was special enough to understand, even if not right now.

She doesn't feel special. She still feels the flutter deep down.

_Jim got better every day. _

_One she walked into the barracks finding him writing a letter._

_When she's standing in front of the cot, he eagerly holds out the letter to her._

_"To Sarah, sorry 'bout the mud. I always hate seeing a pretty face get dirty."_

_It makes her blush and she shoves the letter into her pocket before legging it away._

She's allowed to leave the hospital the same day, and to her surprise finds the stranger waiting for her again. He holds out his arm and without thinking why, she takes it.

He takes her to her hotel room on the edge of town.

"Vince Teagues, come find me at the Herald."

She wonders why Nathan would want her to seek out such strange men.

_Jim stayed for five weeks. Two weeks for the mud and blood leave his body, three to recover enough to be sent back at moments' notice._

_Only he wasn't the type to easily surrender._

The Herald office is located smack in the middle of town.

She hesitates at the door for a moment. The card Nathan left in her coat pocket is nearly crumpled in her hand. A little longer and it'll turn liquid.

The bell above the door clangs and both men jump up at the sight of her.

"I'm here, now tell me".

_Seoul was hot and broody._

_Mostly she remembers people milling about in all directions, dirty children playing in puddles in the middle of the street, and Jim's hand anchoring her through it._

_Late at night, when Jim sleeps she sits on the window sill._

_Down below, in the alley, the beggar children play hide and seek._

Two months after coming to Haven, she moves into the empty apartment above the Herald.

She's never had her own place before. So she lay awake at night and marvels at the silence.

Occasionally, the flutter comes, a few seconds or a few minutes.

Sometimes, the brothers will come up for lunch or dinner and she does her best to make them comfortable.

But she knows they know. Well, Vince knows.

_They used to give the nurses pills. _

_Big green pills that were supposed to prevent "incidents" as the head matron called it._

_Nothing ever came of that weekend in Seoul. When a letter came for her, three weeks later, she was thankful for it._

The third month, she can't ignore the flutter anymore.

She throws up her breakfast and lunch after that. The smell of the printing presses makes her stomach flip.

One morning, after she's thrown up Vince's eggs Florentine, he's had enough.

He takes her to see Dr. Carr.

They sit in the parking lot for a while, until he shows her two golden rings in a neat white handkerchief.

"For pretend".

He walks around the car to open the door for her, and she feels like she's about to walk to her own execution.


	3. Reporters and Troubles

3. Reporters and Troubles

Vince Teagues always found himself an honourable man.

After all, it's what his father forced, beat and preached into him as a little boy.

Because The Guard needs an honourable and respected leader.

And now he's doing the honourable thing for this woman he barely knows but implicitly trusts.

He vaguely knows her face, from old newspaper articles his father kept in a binder on the coffee table.

_Sometimes they'd leaf through it together while being told of Mary and Hannah and Ruth. How she was a special kind of witch who was never to be told of this. If she knew, then the entire town would fall to ruin and life would never be happy again._

_Ruth is his favourite incarnation. She was a schoolteacher who able to teach even the most illiterate of folks to read._

_She even taught little Bennie Groener to speak in sentences rather then hackled words._

_A miracle witch._

_But as the story goes, Ruth had to go._

_The Barn came when her time was up, and nothing, not even her two handsome admirers could stop it._

_His father would tell of the three of them and how scandalous they would behave._

_It's a good thing when she comes, but an even better thing when she leaves._

And now she's here. Her name isn't Ruth and she's far from magical but he refuses to believe that she could be able to cause the harm he's been warned about.

He knew she was here. In the middle of the night, his arm started burning and the Guard symbol appeared on his arm.

So he and Dave decide to lure her.

He knows there's a new candidate applying for the Guard, not a very trustworthy type but good enough for the minor tasks.

And that he's currently in the VA hospital after a stint in Korea.

He doesn't react when they place the poker on his arm, just shudders a little and falls back into his dreamless sleep. Yes, Joe Hansen will make a very good Guard member now.

_Ruth Johansen, John Wournos and Digby Carr are quite the threesome._

_She meets Digby first, because his daughter is her star pupil._

_John tends the gardens around the schoolground and she often asks him to give an improvised speech on plants and flowers._

_Together the three of them form an odd bond, that can not be defined by small town standards._

She almost catches them in the hospital room, but the smell of burning flesh makes her already pale complexion worse, and she faints straight into his arms. They lay her in an empty bed, and make their leave.

Later, when she shows up at the office with a crumpled business card he is pleased that their lure has worked so well.

_One winter morning in 1934, Haven wakes up to a murder._

_The body is laying in the snow, facing upwards._

_The investigation shows that the victim died because his liver appears to have imploded._

_Another thing, is that he was found underneath The Pyre._

_Where long ago, witches were burned._

There's something about her.

It's not the new face or the new name or that he has a binder full of stories about her.

There's a glow, something that wasn't ever captured in those pictures.

She moves in upstairs and for the first time since he graduated high school the apartment feels homely again.

_It doesn't take long for rumours to spread about witches seeking revenge and the Inside Out Trouble._

_They know better then to say this in front of Ruth, of course._

_But she figures it out anyway._

_Particularly because a week later, another yellow pallored body turns up._

_Digby, ever curious Digby_ _checks his second hand medical books and finds no existing condition that makes livers implode. So that leaves only the supernatural, he tells her in a mock scary voice. She laughs at him._

One morning, he's coming up the stairs and he hears her stumbling around.

She on her knees in the bathroom, again. She looks at him pitifully, and then he decides to be the honourable man his father wanted him to be.

He helps her to the car, the rings burning in his coat pocket.

She hesitates but takes the female half anyway.

It's for the best.

Even when the doctor tells them exactly what he's been suspecting all along, there's a little voice inside him that tells him exactly what needs to be done. She should go, but not just yet. Because that little bean inside of her might just be the answer to all The Guards questions.

_The Inside Out Trouble, it turns out, only comes around every three generations._

_This worries the townfolk who now try really hard not to show overbearing emotions._

_They've long known that crying and fighting lead to bad things in a time of Troubles._

_So when Mary Brannock shows up at the schoolhouse with her toddler, Ruth learns how to work miracles._

_That the man who died underneath The Pyre, told the little boy off the day he died. That he didn't mean it but that the Trouble happened anyway. How her son was inconsolable that night. When the body turned up the next day, she considered sending him away but that only distressed him more. Much to the dismay of a man happening to stop at their house to ask for directions. The child cried so hysterically that he preferred to walk away to ask someone else. _

_Ruth looks at the little boy, and tells him in no uncertain terms that crying would not be allowed from now on. That only really good boys deserve the best things in life. That his tears would never be permitted to be seen._

_So little Sean Brannock never cried or got angry in front of other people again. To this day, it remains a mystery how Ruth did it._

_People say it was something in her voice. Something commanding, only heard by the subject she spoke to._

_Something only a witch can do. _

_Something special._


End file.
